20 September 2023 | Lucy Smith
On 31st August 2023, over 80 experts, fans and other interested parties gathered at Magdalen College for a day of talks on “Writing T.E. Lawrence and his World”. Over the course of the day, we heard from many different perspectives on Britain’s most elusive military memoirist from Lawrence’s changing reputation as depicted in biographies to hidden hints about his mental state in Arab Revolt documents to the story of how he was inspired by William Morris and the Arthurian legends in our keynote address!
Our first panel of the day was on the theme of Jeremy Wilson and his archive, and featured papers from Ed Maggs of the booksellers Maggs Brothers on the history of Lawrence in biographies, Hazel K. Bell on her experience of indexing Lawrence’s works in collaboration with Jeremy Wilson, and Joe Berton on the relationship between Jeremy Wilson and A.W. Lawrence, and their vigorous fact-checking of the scandalous 1960s Sunday Times articles on T.E. Lawrence. I also spoke on cataloguing the labyrinthine Jeremy Wilson archive over the past 3 years.
Our keynote address was delivered by Professor Sabina Murray, who spoke eloquently about re-creating a version of T.E. Lawrence from the inside through studying the books that he read in his youth, as preparation for her own biofictional novel. Sabina’s talk led us to speculate on such questions as which knight of the Round Table did Lawrence imagine himself to be and whether Lawrence portrayed himself as an Odysseus figure in Seven Pillars of Wisdom? She also spoke about Lawrence’s Doughty-influenced prose style and whether in her novel, she should “shoot her camel in the head more often”!
The next panel on T.E. Lawrence in biography began with Michael Korda, who gave a paper on the depiction of Lawrence over the twentieth-century and shared some fascinating stories on the original plans for a Lawrence film made by his uncle, Alexander Korda, including hiring Winston Churchill as an advisor. We then heard a paper from Scott Anderson on three documents that gave possible clues to Lawrence’s damaged psyche. The panel was rounded off by a paper by Adam Fraser on his detailed research into the record-breaking Handley Page flights of 1919.
Our final panel combined the themes of T.E. Lawrence and his friends, and Lawrence on the borders of biography and fiction. We began with a talk from Dr. Helen Smith on the conflicts in the editorial relationship between Edward Garnett and T.E. Lawrence. Valentina Flex of Newcastle University Archives then spoke to us on her project cataloguing the archive of Gertrude Bell and how the digital archive is being made accessible in new ways. The day was rounded off with a talk by Jan Woolf on changes in her view of Lawrence over the years, and how this has influenced her depiction of Lawrence in her play “Blood, Gold and Oil”.
You can view the whole conference day here:
Thank you so much for everyone who came on the day to speak or listen to the talks, who joined in the discussions and made new connections! We are so grateful to you for making the day a success!